July 27, 2026

Forsyth Technical Community College announced last week the completion of a groundbreaking transformation plan designed to better align the college’s programs with the needs of a fast-changing, AI-driven economy — reshaping how success is measured for its students and the region it serves.

The plan is the result of a year-long effort as part of the Reimagining Community Colleges (RCC) Design Challenge, led by the Education Design Lab with support from ECMC Foundation. Forsyth Tech was selected as one of five community colleges nationwide — alongside Rio Salado College (AZ), Saint Paul College (MN), Cuyahoga Community College (OH), and Lone Star College-Tomball (TX) — to take part in the initiative.

Rather than asking simply whether students graduate, Forsyth Tech’s plan is built around a more ambitious question: does learning lead to living wages, meaningful careers, and long-term advancement? The college is moving beyond traditional enrollment and completion metrics toward an approach grounded in economic mobility — ensuring that every credential awarded translates into real opportunity for students and the Piedmont Triad region.

“At Forsyth Tech, partnering with the Lab on the Reimagining Community Colleges initiative helped us go beyond asking whether students graduate, and start asking whether they thrive,” said Janet Spriggs, President of Forsyth Technical Community College. “This work is about making sure every credential we award translates into a living wage, a real career, and room to grow — and you’ll see that reflected in our current strategic movement, Vision 2030.”

The initiative arrives at a moment of significant change in higher education and the labor market. Data from the World Economic Forum suggests that nearly 40% of core skills across many industries will shift by 2030, pushing institutions to rethink how they prepare students for work. Community colleges — long-standing engines of regional economic growth — are positioned to lead that shift: after more than a decade of decline, community college enrollment grew 3% in the fall of 2025, fueled in part by rising demand from employers and learners alike for shorter, career-aligned pathways.

The RCC Design Challenge was launched with funding from MacKenzie Scott’s Yield Giving and is grounded in Education Design Lab’s Future of Learning framework — a set of five design questions developed in 2023 that guided each participating college’s transformation process. The framework pairs human-centered design principles with a multi-year implementation commitment, engaging students, faculty, and employers as co-designers throughout.

“Too often, higher ed institutions focus their strategic planning processes on answering the question ‘how do we get better at what we already do,’ and then the plans themselves end up collecting dust,” said Dr. Lisa Larson, CEO of Education Design Lab. “These five colleges have spent the year asking a harder set of questions: what do our learners and our communities actually need from us, and how must we change to meet those needs?”

“ECMC Foundation’s North Star goal is to help learners earn postsecondary credentials and degrees that will give them the best chance for economic and social mobility,” said Jacob Fraire, President, ECMC Foundation. “This initiative illustrates the critical importance of focusing on the specific needs of learners, especially those farthest from opportunity.”

With its transformation plan complete, Forsyth Tech now moves from design into implementation — aligning internal teams, testing new approaches, and measuring progress against its economic-mobility goals as part of its broader Vision 2030 strategic plan.

The RCC Design Challenge builds on Education Design Lab’s Community College Growth Engine, which has engaged 120 colleges nationwide in designing more than 300 micro-pathways. The Lab plans to document and share insights from Forsyth Tech and its fellow cohort institutions to inform the broader community college field.

Building on this inaugural cohort, the Lab will launch the next phase of RCC in early 2027 with initial support from Google.org: a competitive national opportunity for a state or system of community colleges to apply the Future of Learning framework in a two-year transformation effort. Colleges and partners interested in learning more can visit eddesignlab.org.